hrira by Simon Aulman

Another "best bits" album - snippets of things that have appeared in recent days - things that originally were maybe much much much too long - and here/now they might still be too long, but only in a "much much" way, so I'm getting there.

Because of the nature of the originals, this is a rougher album than Editarrhoea, just a less appealing thing - so I expect it to tank even worse than Editarrhoea, and being as my expectations are always wrong, this could hit one of the good nerves that lovers always try to hit - me always accidentally - though to be fair, my lovers have only ever hit my good nerves accidentally too.

This one also has an old-fashioned shape - starting with an irresistible dancer, then a static track which people put up with because they feel it's good for them, then another dancer, which they like but are glad it's even shorter, then another static thing that people put up with because it comes before another irresistible dancer, albeit less irresistible and even messier.

I don't feel that music should ever "be good for you", so I just really like 1 and 3 and 5, and the two intervening tracks are merely here in my effort to conform. You might call it "selling out". Come round and I'll show you the stats in a week, and then you can eat your words. Not much else in this house with no food.

This laptop feels like it only has days to live. So this morning I nipped out and spoke to a salesman. I was convinced. Everything was going quickly and inevitably towards the actual sale - and then he wanted to know my phone number so the deliverers tomorrow could contact me if there's any problem.

Of course I do not remember my phone number - in my life I only ever get numbers that are deliberately engineered to be impossible to remember. Other people have phone numbers that go 07123456789 or 07555555555 or even 07464646464. Me, I'm lucky to actually have a mobile phone number that starts 07. And after that every succeeding number is more random than is mathematically possible and cleverly nuanced to cause amnesia in anyone seeing/hearing it.

So I couldn't tell him my number. So I couldn't buy the thing. So I didn't Except I did. I did it online when I got home. What is memorable about the whole thing is that I am not getting a new laptop, I am getting a new desktop.

It's taken till today to discover that desktops are actually cheaper and bigger and faster and better and etc etc etc than laptops - of course only for people who want their computer to be rooted to one spot - which this laptop has been since the day I moved into this house.

Please don't tell me that I've been sold a pup. In a day or two all my future music will be made on a screen that's about the size of Wimbledon, but it won't sound any different, so long as I can find the same old version of Audacity to install on it, built probably in about 1989 or somewhen - I've tried more recent improved versions/updates in the past and could never understand them, every "improvement" was a step towards me, well, you know the rest - and yes the salesman this morning asked me if I used Ableton - I mean, look at me, frequently mistaken for a homeless guy on the streets - it was kindly meant.

Pedro, on floor 4 of John Lewis, if you kept your promise you will now have heard some of my music for yourself and will thus have assuredly convinced yourself that, no, I do not use Ableton. All the distortions and the bits that sound wrong - they are deliberate and there is no "sounds wrong" in my music. When I lie on my deathbed I shall look back on all of the days of distortions and disasters, the same lifetime's-worth that we all look back on, and I shall assure myself that it was all deliberate and nothing really went wrong at all, and it will truly be the truth.

music made within the past week, cover by me